WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 465

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Age of Man (2)

Arthur's inner world crumbled.

This space had been woven from her thoughts, and now that those thoughts were gone, there was no reason for it to hold together, and no way it could. The field began dissolving from its edges, like sand scattered on a wind.

Najin stood still and watched it go.

He had seen everything.

He had read Arthur's memories. Why she had made those choices, what she had gained from them, what she had left behind in the end. He had seen all of it. Turning those memories over in his mind, Najin let out a long breath.

'If only I could have arranged a meeting with Merlin.'

Others, maybe not. But Merlin, and Bedivere especially, deserved the chance to stand before Arthur again. That was the reward owed to those who had waited a thousand years for her sake.

It was impossible, though.

This space had only ever been open to the bearer of Excalibur, to Najin alone. He was the only one who could stand before Arthur. Knowing that, Merlin had asked him: go and see, then come back and tell me.

"......"

A faint bitterness settled in him. Even this Arthur, watching the story of Merlin play out before her, had felt that same ache, pressing her lips tight together. Arthur had carried deep guilt toward Merlin, her first companion, the most irreplaceable friend she had ever had.

That was the regret Arthur had never been able to lay to rest.

In the end, that was all it was.

What kind of life has no regrets? What kind of life leaves nothing unfinished? Everyone departs having left something behind in the world. What remains, then, belongs to those who stay. Najin gripped Excalibur tight.

A brief bow of the head.

Respect for the hero who had opened an age.

Tap.

He walked forward through the dissolving inner world.

2.

"I see."

The first thing Merlin said after hearing Najin out was: I see. She did not rage. She did not pour out resentment at Arthur. She simply said I see, and let out a long, quiet breath.

"The thing is, well, maybe."

Merlin tilted her head slightly downward.

"To some extent, I'd already guessed. Saying I didn't would be a lie. If Arthur left all of us behind and went to the Abyss alone, there had to be a reason she couldn't explain......"

She was not an idiot by any measure.

Even if she couldn't read Arthur's thoughts, she paid far too much attention to her companion to be blind to her heart. Merlin knew Arthur better than anyone.

"I thought it was one of two things. Either someone was needed to protect the world she was leaving behind, or she was doing it so I wouldn't die. A thousand years of watching told me the first was more likely."

That was how Arthur had always lived.

For the greater good.

Or for the sake of her companions.

"Was that it."

"Yeah. Turns out it was both."

Arthur was certain to lose. And the loser would lose everything. Whether Merlin intervened, whether the Round Table stepped in, the outcome would not change.

"If Arthur had told me to come along, if she had turned to look at me right then... I would have followed her no matter what. It might have meant dying, but what of it? I would have thought that was just where the journey ended."

Nothing could have stopped Merlin from going. The same way no one could stand in Siegfried's path, there was no one who could block Merlin's way except Siegfried or Arthur herself.

Because she knew that.

Because she knew that if she turned to look, Merlin would come.

Arthur had not looked back. She had ignored Merlin's desperate cry. She had turned away and left alone. One death was enough, and that death would be hers. And so she had betrayed the expectations of her closest friend.

"Would explaining have convinced me? Probably not. More likely I would have been the one to convince Arthur."

Head still lowered, her shoulders trembled.

"So that's how it was. I'd guessed, but still... yeah."

A brief silence, just the sound of breathing.

"You know."

"I'm listening."

"I resented her. I wanted something to blame, at least. She tells me to protect the world? You leave all by yourself, you leave me behind, and then you tell me not to die, to stay here and guard everything you left? I thought that was cruel."

Her voice shook.

"Is all you have your cause? Was it nothing but the conviction to protect the world? The companions who walked that journey with you, did they count for nothing against that grand ideal? I wanted to ask her that. I wanted to demand to know what we ever were to you."

That was why the fairy Merlin despised the words "greater good" with a bone-deep hatred. Anyone who charges forward for some cause, for some ideal, will inevitably stop seeing the people around them. When the moment that matters arrives, you get left behind.

"Are we included in the future you're talking about?"

That was what she had wanted to ask.

"I blamed Arthur with questions like that. Without something to hold onto, it was too hard to keep going."

"......"

"But it wasn't like that. It turns out it wasn't."

Merlin's voice trembled.

"You weren't only carrying a cause. You weren't throwing us aside for your ideals. I was still there in the future you were trying to build. Yes, someone was needed to protect the world you were leaving behind. But even so......"

You wanted me to live.

You wanted me to survive.

"You awful woman."

Merlin smiled. She smiled and cried at the same time.

"You said you'd keep your promise. You said we'd reach that ideal place together. And when it looked like you couldn't keep that promise, you quietly passed it off to your successor? You really are awful."

She shot a glance at Arthur's body, lips moving silently. There was something almost petulant about it.

"We never even got a proper goodbye. If I'd known it would come to this, I would have hit that Simulacrum of yours a few more times back then. Honestly, tell me the truth, you didn't come out because you were scared of getting hit by me, were you? You really......"

Tap. Merlin reached out and touched Arthur's body.

"How am I supposed to resent you properly now."

For a while, she said nothing more.

Long or short, some stretch of time passed before Merlin lifted her head sharply. She wiped her tear-streaked face on her sleeve, then looked at Najin.

"Najin."

"Yes, Merlin."

"I've said this before, but I'll say it again. Listen carefully."

Red-rimmed eyes fixed on him. She grabbed his sleeve and her voice came out fierce.

"Don't you dare leave me behind the way she did, or you die. Not at the Witch of the Abyss's hands. Mine. Got it?"

"You have said that a few times."

"It's important, so I say it more than once. If there's a sacrifice to be made, we make it together. If we die, we die together."

A threat and a plea at once. Looking down at Merlin looking up at him, Najin found himself smiling before he could help it.

"What? Why are you smiling? Do my words sound like a joke to you?"

"Not at all."

"Then why......"

"Who's talking about sacrifice? I have no intention of doing anything of the sort, so being told not to is a little funny, that's all."

He wiped her face for her. Honestly, how do you manage to get sand on yourself everywhere you go, he said, and brushed off her clothes. Merlin stared at him, lips working.

"You mean that?"

"Who would I lie to? Can I even lie? Everything I'm thinking goes straight to you. You're probably hearing it right now, aren't you?"

Najin got to his feet.

He held a hand out to Merlin, who was still sitting on the ground.

"Done crying? Then let's go. Crybaby."

"Who are you calling a crybaby."

"Fair enough, it's a natural thing. Maybe it's too much to tease you for it. They do say people get more tearful as they get older......"

"What?"

Merlin shot to her feet and tried to kick him in the shin, but Najin sidestepped with easy grace. Could a mage really keep up with the evasive footwork of a top-tier warrior who had bested even Siegfried? Go learn some footwork first. Amateur.

Thwack.

An amateur at being a warrior, but first-rate as a mage. Merlin snapped her fingers, and a hammer made of ice cracked Najin squarely in the back of the head.

"Ow!"

And that was how that went.

3.

"And that is what happened."

"...... I have a great deal to say, but I will hold my tongue."

"Hm? About what?"

Bedivere barely managed to swallow the words: do you perhaps have more than one life, that you would tease Merlin about her age to her face? Well, to handle a woman like Merlin, one would have to be the kind of heavyweight he clearly was.

"......"

Bedivere looked at the Round Table for a long moment.

"So the king knew everything all along."

"It seems so."

"She knew she would lose. Knowing that, she left alone, so that even in defeat, she alone would suffer it. She set out that way, and yet she still managed to take a witch along as her companion in the end."

Bedivere laughed, shaking his head.

"Consistent to the last. As ever."

He was the first knight of the Round Table. He had watched over Arthur for as long as Merlin had, from before Arthur was ever called the Knight King.

"I remember the day Excalibur was returned."

He spoke.

"It would be a lie to say I felt no resentment. But my reverence outweighed it, and so I stayed. I guarded the broken Round Table, restored what I could, and took it upon myself to stand watch."

That was the life he had lived.

"It was not without meaning. Because you are here. And because I finally understand what the king wished for."

"Then......"

"Yes. I have much I want to say to the king, but I will save those words as well. They will mean more at the end of the journey than they would now. Don't you think?"

Najin nodded.

"There's a hideously enormous dragon to deal with, and a witch who calls herself a god while doing nothing but causing grief, and she needs to be properly thrashed."

He raised Excalibur.

"The age has changed. The first order of business is telling a representative from ten thousand years ago: that seat is no longer yours. We have no more need of representatives like you."

He drove Excalibur down into the Round Table.

The Round Table drank in light. The Star of the Round Table, which had held its place through long ages, began to stir. Old stars scattered their radiance as though drawn toward a newly risen one.

"A new age calls for new representatives."

Stars began to move across the night sky.

"Representatives to lead the Age of Man."

It was not only the stars belonging to the Round Table that stirred. As if pulled by them, as if answering the signal sent up by the Dawning Star, countless constellations began to gather.

At the highest point of the Sword Order.

Karon had been tending to a sword when he looked up at the sky. Across the wide expanse of night, the eight stars he had hung there trembled. At the center of that trembling was the Dawning Star.

"Always running me ragged without a moment's rest."

Star of a Thousand Swords, Karon.

Gramr at his hip, he set out.

In the office of the Sacred Blood Church.

Razian had been lecturing her other half on law and flexibility when she glanced suddenly at the sky. The six stars she had hung there were trembling. Yuel felt the same trembling in her two stars as well.

"It seems the time has come."

, Yes, so it appears.

The Star of Heavenly Slaughter raised her sword.

The Inheritance Star took up the Code of Law.

In a cozy bedroom of the Sacred Body Church.

The Star Incarnation, Enia, had been savoring a rare moment of rest when she felt her seven stars tremble and let out a sigh. Did the Dawn Horn truly have no concept of rest? Face scrunching up, she put her clothes on anyway.

"Once this is done, I'm taking ten years off."

"The next scheduled event has already been announced, Star Incarnation-nim. There is the Continent tour to complete, and a pilgrimage to the Outland as well."

"Oh, elder, please!"

Star of Polar Night, Enia gathered her pillar of light.

At the tallest tower in the Britain Empire.

Gerd had been in the middle of swinging his sword when he looked up. The sky, which had barely known a quiet day lately, was churning with a little more noise than usual tonight. The nine stars hanging in that turbulent sky trembled.

"......"

Through the battle with the Carnival King, through the grueling fight at the Boundary Line of Camlann, he had scraped together just one more star, and yet looking at the eleven now shining above him, Gerd felt something complicated stir inside.

"The great founding emperor's heir calls upon the Empire. The Empire will answer."

With the emperor's declaration, the pillars of the Empire assembled.

First Star, Gerd Isabalt.

With him at the head, the constellations of the Empire began their march.

At the Boundary Line of Camlann.

Standing at the very front, defending humanity's frontline, the guardian knight of Londinel, Kirchhoff, looked up at the sky. His close friend was calling for him. The hero driving this age was calling for the heroes who would follow.

"Can't very well sit this one out."

Grand Culmination, Kirchhoff drove his glaive into the ground.

One became two, two became three.

Three became ten.

Countless stars began gathering under the name of the Dawning Star. Those who could be called representatives of their own worlds, those who carried the weight of that title, came together on the field of battle.

To kill the oldest death of all.

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